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This is the third record ever in Santa Barbara County
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Wayne Chapman
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You never know when you’ll see something out of the ordinary.
This May, CCBER nursery manager Wayne Chapman was out hiking in the Santa Ynez Mountains when he came across a bird he did not recognize. Carefully, he managed to get close enough to the bird to snap a few photographs of it, which he sent to our vertebrate curator and ornithologist, Mark Holmgren.
After some speculation, Mark sent the photographs around to other birders, and it was tentatively indentified as a one-year-old Mississippi Kite. If so, this is the third record ever in Santa Barbara County for this species. The first record was a male shot June 18, 1933 near Goleta, and the second was a bird seen June 3, 1970. The same week in late May of this year, another Mississippi Kite was seen in Los Angeles County.
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Mississippi Kite |
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